Center for Technology Innovation welcomes Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee

Brookings Vice President Darrell West announced this week that Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee has joined the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program. Dr. Turner-Lee will serve as a fellow in the program’s Center for Technology Innovation and as a contributor to TechTank.

Dr. Turner-Lee comes to Brookings from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries. She served as vice president and chief research and policy officer during her tenure, and led the design and implementation of their research, policy, and advocacy agendas.  Dr. Turner-Lee’s most notable research was her development of the first national minority broadband adoption study, empirical research that was conducted during her tenure at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and cited in the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan.

“We are pleased that Nicol Turner-Lee has chosen to continue her commitment to advancing the equity and positive impact of technology and the media at Brookings,” said Darrell West, vice president of governance studies and director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Institution.

At the Center for Technology Innovation, Dr. Turner-Lee will research public policy designed to enable more equitable access to technology across the U.S. and to harness its power to create change in communities around the world.

Dr. Turner-Lee graduated with honors from Colgate University and has a doctorate in Sociology from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She is also a Visiting Scholar at Arizona State University’s Center for Gender in Equity Science and Technology, focused on researching the engagement of women and girls of color in STEM.  In addition to being an active writer and speaker, Dr. Turner-Lee is a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy and is actively involved with the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC).